Box 23, Folder 4: Wisconsin: Geographical & Topographical 1844

EARLY HISTORY. 19

with them nineteen days up the Mississippi to within six leagues of the Falls of St. Anthony, a name then first applied to this romantic place in honor of the patron saint of the expedition. From thence they travelled for sixty leagues, on foot, to the habitations of the Indians, where they were joined by Sieur de Luth, and five men. Towards the end of September, (1680) they descended the river named by them the St. Francis, to the Mississippi, and passing by way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, arrived at Green Bay, where they found many Canadians, come there for the purpose of trade.

We have no data at hand from which to estimate the quantities of furs purchased by the French at this early period, and sent to Europe. This constituted almost the sole motive for "locating" in these wild, and till then, unknown shores. The French are possessed of the peculiar faculty of making themselves "at home" with the Indians, and lived without that dread of their tomahawks which is so keenly felt by the pioneers of English settlements. They were not able, however, to maintain friendly terms with all the different tribes into which the Indian population was divided, for before the close of the seventeenth century, we find them united with the Chippewas and Menomonees, contending with the Sauks and Foxes for a free passage across the country from Green Bay to the Mississippi, in which they met with complete success, by a decisive battle fought at Butte des Morts, or the Hill of the Dead. The Ottagamies (Foxes) had selected a strong position upon the Fox river, which they fortified by three

20 EARLY HISTORY.

rows of palisades and a ditch. They here secured their women and children, and prepared for a vigorous defence. Their entrenchment was so formidable that De Louvigny, the French commander, declined an assault, and invested the place in form. By regular approaches, he gained a proper distance for mining their works, and was preparing to blow up one of the curtains, when they proposed a capitulation. Terms were eventually offered and accepted; and those who survived the siege were preserved and liberated.* No further difficulties existed between the French traders and missionaries, and the Indians, from that period down to the present time. How different would it probably have been, had almost any other nation attempted to penetrate so far into the country of these "wild men of the woods"!

Wisconsin remained in possession of the French, and constituted a portion of "New France," until 1759^1763^, when it was surrendered to Great Britain, and became subject to her government. This change of government, it may be supposed, produced but little change in the condition of things in places so remote from the seat of government. Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, were then the only posts occupied within our limits. British authority was exercised over us from this period until the northwestern country was transferred to the American government, in 1794, being seven years after the date of the ordinance for the establishment of a "Territorial Government" in the same. During

*Cass — Hist. and Sci. Sketches of Michigan, p. 22, (1834)

[pencil notes in 1695? P du Chien occupied as a Military post by U.S.? French? 1796 June 1- P. du C. formally surrendered to the U. S.]

CASS' EXPEDITION. 21

this period of thirty-five ^one^ years, but little change took place in Wisconsin — the Indian continued to hunt the deer, and to trap the beaver unmolested, and bartered his furs at Green Bay, or Machina, for the trifles, or "fire water" of the trader. [pencil paragraph mark] As early, however, as 1780, Peosta, the wife of an Ottagamie warrior, discovered lead near the Mississippi river; and in 1788, Julian Dubuque, obtained from the Indians at Prairie du Chien, a grant of land, extending seven leagues on the Mississippi, and three leagues deep. This grant was recognised by the Spanish government in 1796, but was not confirmed by our own. For several years the mining operations were quite limited, as may well be supposed; and in 1805, Mr. Dubuque informed Lieut. Pike that he raised from twenty to forty thousand pounds annually. Schoolcraft informs us that the settlement of Prairie du Chien was first begun in 1783, by Mr. Giard, Mr. Antaya and Mr. Dubuque, but that there had formerly been an old settlement about a mile below the site of the present village, which existed during the time the French had possession of the country. [pencil insertion Green Bay lake possessed? of by U.S. troops in 1816]

Governor Cass, in 1819, one year after this country was annexed to the territory under his authority, proposed to the Secretary at War, (John C. Calhoun) that an expedition be fitted out to explore it, which was accomplished the following year. The party consisted of Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory; Dr. Alexander Wolcoot^t^, physician; Capt. D. B. Douglass, civil and military engineer; Lieut. AEneas Mackay,

22 CASS' EXPEDITION.

commanding the soldiers; James D. Doty, secretary to the expedition; Robert A. Forsyth, Charles C. Trowbridge, Alexander R. Chase, and Henry R. Schoolcraft, mineralogist, whose "Narrative Journal," published in 1821, is replete with valuable information relative to this country. From this work we learn that Wisconsin was even then but little more than the abode of a few Indian traders scattered here and there throughout the Territory, as at Lapointe, Fond du Lac — on the Bois Brule — the St. Croix — Sandy Lake — Leech Lake — Milwaukee — and many other points. These posts were usually protected by a stockade, enclosing, perhaps, a hundred feet square: that at Sandy Lake had bastions at two of its angles pierced for musketry. "The pickets were of pitch-pine, thirteen feet above the ground, a foot square, and pinned together with stout plates of the same wood. There were three gates, which are shut whenever liquor was dealt out to the Indians. The stockade enclosed two rows of buildings, containing the provision store, work-shop, ware-house, rooms for the clerks, and accommodations for the men. On the west and southwest angles of the fort were four acres of ground enclosed with pickets, and devoted to the culture of potatoes." This fort was first erected in 1794, by the Northwest Fur Company. The garrisons at Prairie du Chien and at the mouth of the St. Peters, were first established and occupied in 1819.

At this time but little was known of the value of the lead and copper mines on the upper Mississippi — only three places being known besides the Dubuque mines,

WISCONSIN IN 1820 23

where lead could be obtained, and these were worked exclusively by the women of the Fox Indians, assisted perhaps by the old men — the young men and warriors holding themselves above it. "They employ the hoe, shovel, pick axe and crow bar, in taking up the ore. These things are supplied by the traders, but no shafts are sunk, not even of the simplest kind, and the windlass and the bucket are unknown among them. They run drifts into the hill so far as they can conveniently go, without the use of gunpowder, and if a trench caves in, it is abandoned. When a quantity of ore has been got out, it is carried in baskets by the women to the Mississippi, where it is purchased by the traders, at the rate of two dollars for a hundred and twenty pounds, payable in goods at Indian prices." The settlement at Green Bay is mentioned by Schoolcraft, upon his approach down the Fox river, as a a country of exceeding beauty, "checkered as it is with farm houses, fences, cultivated fields, the broad expanse of the river, the bannered masts of the vessels in the distant bay, and the warlike display of military barracks, camps and parades. The scene burst suddenly into view, and no combination of objects in the physiognomy of a country could be more happily arranged, after so long a sojournment in the wilderness, to recall at once to the imagination the most pleasing recollections of civilized life. The settlement now consists of sixty dwelling houses, and five hundred inhabitants, exclusive of the garrison. They are, with few exceptions, French who have intermarried with Indian women, and are said to be indolent, gay, intemperate and illiterate.